The Canes just weren't sharp enough for 60 minutes in Saturday's loss.
The Carolina Hurricanes saw their two-game winning streak snapped due to a 4-3 loss to the St. Louis Blues Saturday night.
The Canes had a great start and a tremendous response after the game went sideways in the second period, but too many mental lapses spelled defeat for the Hurricanes.
Here are some of my takeaways from the loss:
The Turning Point
So how does a game go from an absolutely dominant opening 20 minutes where a team outchances the other 32 to 7 to a second period flop?
Well for one, you take bad penalties.
"The penalties kind of took us out of our game and gave them their legs and then they scored on their chances," said Carolina coach Rod Brind'Amour. "That's pretty much what happened tonight, unfortunately."
Shayne Gostisbehere took back-to-back penalties to start the second period and even though the Blues didn't score on those power plays, it allowed them to regroup, get a feel for the game and get into a rhythm.
"I took two bad ones tonight," Gostisbehere said. "Can't really do that. It lets their best players touch the puck and get a feeling for it. We dominated on the first and it was pretty evident and then we came out and I personally took two stupid penalties and it got their top guys going. If they feel the puck, they're going to start making their plays and getting their confidence for the game."
Hockey is all about flow. When you're on and you're forcing your game onto your opponents, it's hard for them to find a moment to push back.
Those penalties though gave St. Louis the perfect opportunity to push and when they did, they capitalized.
The Epic Highs and Lows of the Top Pairing
Last night, Brent Burns and Jaccob Slavin combined to force Sidney Crosby to have one of the worst games of his career.
The duo absolutely smothered the future hall-of-famer and even led the Hurricanes in chances at the same time too
However, tonight was not a banner night for the pairing.
The Canes' top pair was on the ice for three of the four goals the Blues scored and they surrendered five high-danger chances against.
While they did again lead the team in chances and were on the ice for two of the Canes' three goals, the negatives outweighed the positives.
Burns led the team in ice time (22:51) even after playing 20:28 on Friday.
Despite the veteran blueliner being an ageless wonder at 39, he's still been noticeably slowing down and I feel that it probably isn't the best idea to ride him.
He's struggling to run the blueline on PP2 too and he got blown by on two of the goals against tonight as well.
I still think Burns is an effective player and is easily a top-four defenseman, but I'm not sure he should be leading the team in ice time in the second half of a back-to-back.
Yearning for a Bit Better Goaltending
Rod Brind'Amour said it best after the game.
"You can't fault him on the goals."
But...
"But you want to try to get one of those just to keep us in the game especially after we came back."
While you can't say that Pyotr Kochetkov lost the Canes the game tonight, you also can't say he helped them toward winning it either.
He was screened on the first two goals and had some weak defending in front of him on the last two, but you need your goaltender to bail you out sometimes.
The game is all about mistakes and a goalie's job more than anything is to cover up those mistakes and tonight Kochetkov just wasn't able to bail them out.
Goal Streaks
On a positive note, the Canes are continuing to get contributions from throughout the lineup.
For one, Shayne Gostisbehere picked up his third goal in three games, converting on the power play for a second straight game.
Jack Roslovic also kept his streak alive, scoring his second in a row in similar fashion by just ripping it from distance.
Carolina is going to be a team by committee this season so you need guys like that scoring.
"Great players," Jordan Staal said. "Obviously they know how to put the puck into the back of the net and we need that. [Gostisbehere] has been dynamite on the power play. You can tell by the way it moves. He changes the whole dynamic and [Roslovic] has an absolute ripper. A couple of big goals for us."
Special Teams
It wasn't pretty to start the year, but the Canes' special teams are starting to take shape.
It's been back-to-back games now where the Hurricanes went perfect on the penalty kill (9-for-9 for the weekend) and got the power play to convert (three PP goals in the last two games).
PP1 has been looking like it's starting to find some chemistry and a big part of that is how good Gostisbehere is looking.
He's adapted well to the team and he's going to be a big piece going forward this year.
The PK is also looking much more Hurricane-esque. It's a matter of just being in the right spot and being willing to grind and the Canes are rising to the task.
"I thought the PK was good," Staal said. "We were slipping on a few plays, but all in all we were grinding and had some big kills. Our special teams should have won us that game if we were good at 5-on-5 which we weren't. Some mistakes, but the boys grinded for sure."